Obviously proper hand washing practices are critical in many industries. Such industries include food preparation (including processing and manufacturing), food cooking and serving (e.g. restaurants and catering), medical treatment services, medical device and pharmaceutical production and manufacturing, in various laboratory research and testing environments where minimizing various contaminants may be critical, and the like. Proper hand washing is the primary means by which infection is not spread and that food is preserved from contamination. Proper hand washing also plays an important role in maintaining purity of pharmaceuticals and medical devices.
Generally, it has fallen to employers in these various industries to provide proper training to their employees and independent contractors with respect to proper hand washing techniques, which may vary from industry to industry and from employer to employer. But compliance with proper hand washing training has largely been left to employee and independent contractor trust alone, such as the employee or independent contractor completing a log of hand washing activities. One reason for the art to rely primarily upon trust has been privacy concerns of the user, since many hand washing facilities are located within restrooms and/or bathrooms.
It may be desirable to move beyond a reliance on just trust alone and to not only encourage and properly train users, but also to actively monitor and/or validate hand washing to ensure actual compliance with proper hand washing techniques. Such active monitoring and/or validation of hand washing to ensure actual compliance may provide a benefit to entities (e.g. employers) who may be responsible for a user's hand washing compliance to mitigate against liability arising from non-compliance and/or to improve hygiene and health care of activities which typically follow and flow from hand washing.
There is a need in the art for methods and system which permit active monitoring and validation of hand washing to ensure compliance with required hand washing techniques, but that do so by maintaining appropriate privacy of the user.
It is to these ends that the present invention has been developed.